Jewish Humor Central is a blog to start your day with news of the Jewish world that's likely to produce a knowing smile and some Yiddishe nachas. It's also a collection of sources of Jewish humor--anything that brings a grin, chuckle, laugh, guffaw, or just a warm feeling to readers.
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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Do you remember what happened on the night of August 6, 1962? It depends how much of an Allan Sherman fan you are. That's the night on which the comedian-writer turned folksinger recorded all ten tracks on his first record album, My Son the Folksinger.

Sherman went on to dominate the world of song parody during the 1960s and recorded seven more albums. Listening to or reading his lyrics is a crash course in pop culture of the 1960s, with Sherman taking satiric swipes at summer camp, psychiatry, fad diets, Hadassah ladies, school dropouts, and upward mobility.

Music publicist Conqueroo recently reported that all eight Allan Sherman Warner Bros. albums have been remastered and released as CDs. They're available at Amazon.com and other music stores.

Writing for Conqueroo, publicist Cary Baker reports:

The digitally remastered albums include My Son, the Folk Singer; My Son, the Celebrity; My Son, the Nut; Allan in Wonderland; For Swingin' Livers Only!; My Name Is Allan; Allan Sherman Live! (Hoping You Are the Same); and Togetherness and feature newly written liner notes by Barry “Dr. Demento" Hansen.

Sherman's musical career started when his career as a television producer ("The Steve Allen Show," “I've Got a Secret") came to a close. He had recorded a handful of Borscht Belt song parodies in the '50s for Jubilee Records in his native New York and decided to take up where he'd left off. Having relocated to Los Angeles, Sherman was signed to Warner Bros. Records by A&R man and arranger-conductor Lou Busch. The recording session for what would become My Son, the Folk Singer took place where his next six albums would be recorded -- Radio Recorders on Hollywood's McCadden Place, where he was joined by six musicians, six singers, and a live audience of 100, seated in folding chairs, who noshed and imbibed. “I wanted it to be like a party," he later wrote in his autobiography. The crowd laughter became an essential part of the Allan Sherman sound.

Baker describes the eight Allan Sherman reissues on Collectors' Choice Music as follows:

- My Son, The Folk Singer: Sherman recorded his #1 debut album one night on August 6, 1962 with arranger Lou Busch at Hollywood's Radio Recorders before a live audience of friends including Johnny Mercer, Theo Bikel and Pat Carroll. As reissue annotator Dr. Demento writes, “He had developed a style that somehow preserved the soul of Jewish humor but made it sound all-American." The album contains such Sherman gems as “Sarah Jackman" (based on “Frre Jacques"), “My Zelda" ("Matilda"), “The Streets of Miami" ("The Streets of Laredo"), “Seltzer Boy" ("Water Boy") and “Oh Boy" ("Chiapanecas"). The album sold so fast that when Warner Bros. ran out of album jackets, they continued to sell the vinyl alone.

- My Son, The Celebrity: At 37, Allan Sherman, the portly ex-TV producer, was suddenly famous. In the space of three sessions in late 1962, he and Busch again invited friends to the studio, supplying folding chairs, hors d'oeuvres and an open bar. The resulting album featured “Harvey and Sheila" (set to the tune of “Hava Nagila"), painting a portrait of the emerging suburban Jewish upper middle class ("They bought a house one day/Financed by FHA/It had a swimming pool/Full of H20/Traded their used MG/For a new XKE/Switched to the GOP/That's the way things go"). The second album, which also reached #1, also included “Mexican Hat Dance," “The Let's All Call Up AT&T and Protest to the President March," “Won't You Come Home Disraeli" and “Barry Is the Baby's Name/Horowitz/Get on the Garden Freeway."

- My Son, The Nut: Sherman's fan base now including President John F. Kennedy and Harpo Marx. The parodist once told Busch he wanted to record with a full orchestra, which Busch thought was indeed nuts, but agreed to add concert strings and brass to the mix for this 1963 album. Featured here is “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," sung from the vantage point of a malcontented kid at overnight camp. The Los Angeles Times called it “pure craft . . . Sherman clearly tapped not only his son's experience that summer but the . . . terror of a child separated from his parents." Other tracks included “You Went the Wrong Way Old King Louie," “Automation," “I See Bones," “Hungarian Goulash No. 5," “Here's to the Crabgrass," “Rat Fink" and “Hail to Thee, Fat Person." The album held the #1 spot for eight weeks.

- Allan in Wonderland: Sherman's 1964 album didn't reach #1 -- the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan three weeks after its release, thereby changing the pop charts forever -- but Allan Sherman's fourth album stood up well against its chart-topping forebears. In fact its humor might even have been a little more pointed, most notably “The Dropouts March," which took a particularly cynical look at educators' well-meaning efforts to keep kids in school. With psychiatry a popular topic for comedians in the early '60s, Sherman provided “You Need an Analyst," based on “I've Got a Little List" from The Mikado. The album maxed at #25 on the album chart.

- For Swingin' Livers Only: The album title was an homage to Frank Sinatra's famous 1956 album Songs For Swingin' Lovers. And indeed Sherman made no bones about on which side of the popular music divide he stood with “Pop Hates the Beatles" (to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel"). Also included are “The Twelve Gifts of Christmas," “Grow, Mrs. Goldfarb," “Your Mother's Here to Stay," “Pills," “Shine On Harvey Bloom," “Beautiful Teamsters" and “Bye Bye Blumberg." Although one of his most fertile periods for parody, the November 1964 release reached only #32 on the charts. Sherman kept himself in the public eye, appearing on the “Tonight Show" and authoring articles that year for Playboy, TV Guide, The Saturday Evening Post and New York Magazine.

- My Name is Allan: The fad nutrition book of 1965 was The Drinking Man's Diet, which advanced the peculiar notion that consuming alcohol would ease the stress of dieting and therefore promote weight loss -- a notion that Sherman ran with on this, his final charting album. Featured were “The Drinking Man's Diet" (not a song parody buy rather an original penned by Sherman and arranger Neil Hefti, who also composed the “Batman" theme), “It's a Most Unusual Play," “Peyton Place, USA," “The Laarge Daark Aardvark Song" and “The Painless Dentist." The humor also extends to the album title and cover -- being Jewish is about the only thing Allan Sherman and Barbara Streisand had in common. The album stalled at #88 on the Billboard chart, and was the last album recorded at a Hollywood studio with invited guests in folding chairs.

- Allan Sherman Live! (Hoping You Are the Same): Sparks, Nevada's Nugget hotel/casino was not exactly Carnegie Hall. But after years of recording before invited guests at recording studios, this 1966 release was his first recorded in concert. This was not a rehash of greatest hits, however. Sherman premiered new material -- much of it a minute or less in length -- alongside a few of his best-loved songs. Included are “How Van Nuys Got Its Name," “Smog Gets in Your Eyes," “The Learner's Brassiere," “Mononucleosis," “Scotch and/or Water," “Sorry 'Bout That" and “In Which I Finally Admit That I Won World War II Single-Handed" and “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh -- Nevada Style," complete with a shout-out to the casino's owner. Overall it was not a good year for Sherman; his 21-year marriage came to an end, and he'd added fame -- which had begun to dissipate -- to a list of addictions that included alcohol and carbohydrates. He relocated from Los Angeles to back New York, setting his sights on creating a Broadway musical.

- Togetherness: Allan Sherman's last album, from 1967, was the only one he made without an audience of any kind, and he and musical director Peter Matz (who he'd met an overnight camp) took full advantage of the studio environment with such effects as singing in the shower. The album's single was “Westchester Hadassah," a parody of the New Vaudeville Band's “Winchester Cathedral," itself something of a novelty record. He sang it in what Dr. Demento describes as “somewhere between the quaintly nasal sound of the New Vaudeville Band and the nagging woman of a thousand Jewish comedy routines." Many of the songs were written by Sherman and composer Albert Hague for their Broadway show Birth Is the Coward's Way Out (retitled The Fig Leaves Are Falling). Sadly, the production lasted a total of two days on Broadway.

Sherman moved back to L.A. and began work on a book. By the time it was published in 1973, Sherman was in poor health, suffering from emphysema (after a lifetime of smoking) and increased weight. He died on November 20, 1973 at the age of 47.

Forty-plus years after his heyday, with the re-release of his catalog, Sherman proves that good comedic music can have timeless appeal.

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